


Scars Are Records, Not Descriptions

by EchoResonance



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:26:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5525321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoResonance/pseuds/EchoResonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanda and Allen see scars differently. Allen finds his scars ugly, something shameful gained because he's something less than human. Kanda, however, heals before his skin can scar, and he views them as something as close to sacred as a man who has renounced God can view anything. Scars can say a lot about what a person has been through. But they can't tell you who the person is at their heart. No matter how the scar was made, it reflects only a situation and not the soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars Are Records, Not Descriptions

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 4 of Yullentide: Scars

Allen woke to the feel of cool fingers against his chest. With a mumbled groan, he turned to look at the person lying next to him, sleep-bleary eyes having difficulty focusing on the long raven hair and smooth, fair-skinned face at first. The moment he’d made a sound, the hand tracing patterns on his skin froze, and his partner heaved a sigh that ruffled the hair on top of his head.

“Kanda…?” he said, voice husky. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Beansprout,” Kanda replied evenly. “I’m fine.”

Allen frowned and glanced down at Kanda’s hand where it rested against his chest, feeling his throat tighten slightly at the familiar sight. His skin was hardly smooth. It was riddled with pale, silver-pink imperfections that covered more of him than unblemished skin did, resulting in odd ridges and valleys that weren’t supposed to be there, anatomically speaking. Kanda’s fingers were splayed over quite possibly the largest scar in Allen’s extensive gallery, slicing down from his shoulder to his waist, and slightly off-center, to the right of his neck. It was ugly, several inches thick with jagged edges that would never fade away, and a raw flesh-tone shades darker than his own skin. It had been caused by his very own weapon, which would only cut down those deemed enemies of God, when he foolishly forgot that he housed such an enemy within his body.

Now, Allen didn’t particularly like any of his scars. They were memories of painful battles, and they weren’t nice to look at no matter what angle you tried to approach them from. But most he didn’t mind, either, because the battles from which he’d received them were important, the result of him doing something good. But that scar...it was yet another reminder of how limited his time was, another reminder of the evil inside him that grew stronger every day, fighting to consume him until there was nothing at all left of Allen Walker the Exorcist. It was another reminder of how close he’d already come to losing himself. It was a reminder that, had it not been for the timely intervention of a very pissed-off swordsman, he would likely have already been lost.

“What…” he mumbled, gaze flicking back to Kanda’s.

Kanda pressed his lips together into a tight line, and his fingers twitched against Allen’s torso as if he wanted to draw them back, but couldn’t quite do it. With a sigh that was bordering on a groan, he slumped back on the bed and fixed his gaze on the ceiling, though his hand remained where it was.

“Just thinking,” he said vaguely.

“Funny. I didn’t smell any smoke,” Allen responded, lips twitching at the corners.

Kanda clicked his teeth, unimpressed. “One of these days you’re gonna push me too far.”

Allen snorted and rolled onto his side to look at the other man, dislodging Kanda’s hand in the process. Kanda looked sideways at him at the movement, steely blue eyes gleaming catlike in the semidarkness, and with a sigh shifted so that he mirrored Allen. Propped up on their elbows, mere inches away from each other, each dared the other to break the silence first. If Allen did, he would ask why Kanda was occupying himself with something as strange as stroking that ugly scar. If Kanda did, he’d either tell Allen to fuck off or to simply go back to sleep, avoiding the subject as per his custom.

Whether it meant his loss or his win of the challenge, Allen spoke first.

“Does the scar bother you?”

Startled, it took Kanda a moment to process the question. His brows knitted together and his eyes darkened, a brooding expression that was commonplace on his stoic face. Allen was quiet, watching Kanda while the man considered his words, knowing it would probably take a while for him to reach any sort of conclusion. His silence definitely didn’t have anything to do with the nerves twisting his stomach into knots in anticipation of Kanda’s answer.

He knew where that scar had come from, had been there when he’d gotten it, and had been the one to keep it from becoming something far worse. He’d seen Allen at his absolute weakest, seen him nearly lose to the Fourteenth. There was a lot he could have said about it, about the whole incident, but he’d never brought it up before, something Allen always chalked up to his lack of interest. After all, if only a fool would touch his hand after seeing the pentacle above his eye for the curse it was, what sort of bad luck would a Noah’s host bring any companions?

To be honest, Allen had never wanted to know what Kanda thought about the scar, or the whole ordeal. He didn’t want to hear confirmation that Kanda, who detested the Order, still agreed with them on one front: that Allen was an unstable menace. He didn’t want to hear it. 

“Why…” Kanda said slowly. “Why would a scar bother me?”

Allen blinked.

“What kind of idiot would ask such a stupid question?” he demanded. “A  _ scar _ ? You have more scars than skin; nearly everyone has them.”

“But...that...it’s from…” Allen mumbled awkwardly. 

“It’s from a battle,” Kanda finished bluntly. “A hard-won battle. So what?”

“So what?” Allen echoed. “So it only happened because I’m a--”

“Beansprout,” Kanda interrupted. 

“My name is Allen!” he hissed, bristling at once. 

Incredibly, Kanda’s lips twitched, and Allen watched in disbelief as the corners curved up ever so slightly.

“Yeah, it is.”

His name was Allen. Always had been and always would be. Whatever Noah was trying to take control of his body, it was  _ his _ body first and foremost, the body of Allen Walker, and not the Fourteenth Noah. Every time he came close to calling himself anything else, he’d been cut short by Kanda’s timely interjection of ‘Beansprout,’ which he could never simply leave alone. No, as long as Kanda called him Beansprout, he’d be yelling to Hell and back that he was Allen. 

His spark would be fanned back into the fire it usually was.

Of course, Allen didn’t understand that and, thoroughly confused, he frowned.

“I don’t follow.”

“Not surprising. You’re slower than cold molasses.”

“Why you…”

Kanda rolled his eyes and rolled onto his back once more. Allen, still frowning, leaned over to poke at the inky mark on Kanda’s chest, spreading across his shoulder, until the man swatted his hand aside.

“ _ What _ ?” he grumbled.

“Why were you looking at it, then?” Allen asked.

“Ugh…” Kanda said. “You’re not going to let me go back to sleep, are you?”

“Nope.” 

“Piss off,” the man said, grouchy enough to have lived several lifetimes. But then, he sort of had, and neither lifetime had been all that great. “Why does it matter?”

“Because it was  _ you _ ,” Allen said bluntly. “You don’t--you don’t do that kind of stuff. Touching scars and things. So why?”

Kanda groaned loudly enough to shake the foundations of the inn, and rolled over yet again to present Allen with his broad back. His raven hair was splayed out across the bed, but strands of it clung to his impossibly smooth skin. Skin that, to Allen, looked almost unreal, gleaming in the sliver of moonlight that leaked through the curtained window. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something about the sight made Allen feel…confused, maybe?

“‘m I not allowed to be curious?” 

“Curious?” Allen repeated.

“I swear there’s a fucking echo in this room.”

“Why are you curious about my scar?” Allen pressed.

“What, should I not be? It’s not like I have any.”

His words were mumbled into his pillow, and the muscles in his back were tense. At his words, Allen blinked, and ran his gaze over Kanda’s skin again, this time finding exactly what it was before that had seemed to strange before. All the injuries he’d taken, wounds he’d received, all the things that would have absolutely left marks on an ordinary person, and they might have been nothing but a bad dream with the way his skin laid smoothly over corded muscle. There was no hint that he’d ever been wounded in his life. No line of raised or discolored skin, save the black marks just peering around the curve of his shoulder, barely visible from the back.

There was nothing.

“Is it because of...because of the--”

“Second Exorcist Project,” Kanda finished curtly. “Yeah.”

“So when you heal...you really heal completely?”

Kanda hesitated, then with a sigh, “More or less. Not as much anymore, though.”

Allen’s frown deepened.

“Why not?” he wondered.

“It’s been taking longer for my injuries to heal. For a while, actually. After…” he said without looking around. “After you, uh, sent me and...to Mater…”

He trailed off, finding something in his throat obstructing his voice and trying to swallow past it. Something warm touched the place between his shoulders, light as a feather, and he stiffened in surprise, but with a long, slow breath, closed his eyes and allowed the hand on his back to stay. Allen recognized his white flag and pressed closer, splaying his fingers out across as much of his back as he could. His palm was rough and strangely hard, and Kanda realized that Allen was stroking his upper back with his left hand.

“After Mater…?” Allen prompted quietly. 

Kanda blew a breath out through pursed lips.

“Well, I noticed my regenerative abilities were pretty much gone,” he said. “I still heal fairly fast, and my blood...well, you know. My blood can help heal wounds. But, overall…”

“Is it because of Alma?”

There was a moment where Kanda’s shoulders tensed at the mention of the name, the name that would probably always accompany a pang in his chest and a bitter tang in the back of his throat. Then the moment passed, and Kanda slumped wearily, leaning back slightly into Allen’s touch.

“Probably,” he answered quietly. “So what’s wrong with being curious?”

“Nothing,” Allen said, voice just as soft. “I, ah, I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to…”

“Go to sleep, Allen.”

In a rare moment in which Allen forwent his usual irate response to being brushed aside like that, he shifted closer to Kanda and leaned his forehead against his back, left arm sliding around his waist to pull him against his chest. The raven-haired man sighed, but didn’t move away or try to push Allen back. He lay there quite calmly, and if he pressed back against Allen ever so slightly, it was only his imagination, and if his hand shifted to cover Allen’s against his abdomen, it was just a coincidence that came from trying to get more comfortable.

“...It doesn’t bother me.”

Allen didn’t answer, but he brushed his lips over Kanda’s shoulder, letting him know that he heard. That was the last they spoke that night, with Johnny lying fast asleep in the room next door, but it wouldn’t be the last time Allen found Kanda’s eyes and sometimes hands tracing the lines on his bare torso, documenting each one like he wanted to memorize them. Like he even treasured them.

Maybe…

Maybe the scars weren’t all bad. Sure, they weren’t pretty. Allen was certain he would never find them to be. But maybe they didn’t have to be pretty in order to not be ugly. Kanda seemed to find something in them fascinating, and in his eyes there was something almost like...reverence. Like Allen hid something in those marks that Kanda wished he had, something important and powerful.

_ It’s from a battle. A hard-won battle _ .


End file.
